June 22nd – It was a great ride for the animals, clearly enjoying the sun and warmth. The heron population is booming on the Birmingham canals at the moment, and their comical antics are a joy, as were the cackling ducks in the heart of the city.
I just loved the disdain visible on the face of the snoozing embankment cat whose nap I so clearly wrecked.
I love canal riding on a warm evening.
June 22nd – With the excellent weather we’ve been having, Friday night, post work rides into Brum have become a thing, it seems, and this evening I really needed it. Into the city by the main line from Darlaston to Great Bridge, then coffee, cake and out again vial Spaghetti Junction, Castle Bromwich and the Plats Brook/Newhall Valley cycleway – one of the finest, anywhere.
A lovely, gentle, restorative ride.
June 21st – I passed through Snow Hill Station mid afternoon, and noticed a little bit of lost local history that I’d totally forgotten about – the old Snow Hill tram stop.
When the Midland Metro opened in the late 90s, it originally terminated here at one platform of Snow Hill Station. The stop was dark, dingy and low level, with a notoriously unreliable inexplicably single escalator and a dingy, horrible spiral staircase. It was not a great bit of urban design.
When the Metro line was extended around the City Centre to Stephenson Place, the line was diverted to the side of Snow Hill station and up around Colmore Circus, leaving the Snow Hill stop cut off and replaced by a better, street level station. The lines at the old stop are no longer connected to the main line, and the stop, abandoned, unserviced and closed is gladly being reclaimed by nature and slowly fading.
It’s amazing how quickly such things decay when unused.
June 15th – I really have got the taste for Birmingham and the Black Country’s canals. Another trip into the city after work on a grey, occasionally drizzly afternoon rewarded me with flowers, great bridges and interesting views.
You just know that if life were a video game, there would be a secret something behind that brickwork.
Really enjoyed the Tame Valley Canal today.
June 10th – On the previous Friday, I got the taste for Birmingham and it’s canals again, so I headed up to Wolverhampton on the cut and back down the old line through Tipton into the city centre.
As ever, the sheer vibrancy of this environment – that many would condemn as ugly – was stunning. From the wildlife to the flowers, the discarded dreams in the scrapyard, the geese and herons and all in-between were a joy. I love the seamless continuity of the upper side of the Engine Arm Aqueduct, although you’d be hard pressed to realise the glamorous structure below.
Much of the main line I rode had been resurfaced – and although it needs sweeping badly due to loose gravel – the riding is very good indeed.
Had to smile at the gull that looked like it was concealing a weapon.
A fantastic urban ride. The weather really is spoiling me at the moment.
February 1st – On my way back, the weather was more patchy, but changing trains at Aston midday, I thought of the great genius that was Nuala Hussey’s Stranded in Stechford (she lived for a while near the station) and of the incongruity of the Britannia Hotel, still with the great lady resplendent, enthroned on the roof, but no longer atop a hotel with dreams of majesty but a backstreet cafe.
Aston has changed since I was a teenager, exploring this place and the love I found near here. We drank in pubs long closed, and laughed and dreamed and made friends and argued and loved. We still do most of those things, of course, but Aston, like many places of my youth, is lost to me now. All of the faces I knew here except one have gone as I grow old, either lost, separated or drifted apart, but whenever I stand on these platforms, high above the sprawling morass below, I remember those days and it makes me sad.
Although I’m sad for the people I no longer see, I’m most sad for lost sense of belonging, and for my youth. But all through my life I’ve passed through places like this, made them mine for a while, then life took me to other places, with different horizons, and life moved on.
Aston is just a wind-blown, suburban and somewhat desolate railway station; two platforms and a junction. But there are ghosts here. And they haunt me so.
I felt old. But like my ghost, my spirit remains.
The train came, I hauled my bike onto it and I sat down.
‘Are you OK?’ asked a lady in the opposite seat.
Caught unaware, I wiped my eyes. ‘Just the wind I think’ I said, ineffectually.
‘It’s getting colder’ she replied. And offered me a tissue.
January 4th – In Birmingham for the sfternoon, it was a good chance to fiddle with the new cameras: both gave a good account of themselves.
As regards the Canon, I discovered I had indeed broken a setting – it has a hardware dial for exposure compensation which I’d inadvertently adjusted, making my pictures dark.
Birmingham itself is still doing what it does best – changing. The Brutalist treasure that is Alpha Tower seems forlorn and distraught before the demolition of the last part of the Conservatoire and Fletcher’s Walk, and new buildings are springing up all over the city centre.
But it’s the quiet urbanity and light that charms in Birmingham most, when night falls. I still love this place with all my heart, but I’m getting to the point where I don’t recognise whole parts of it anymore.
November 22nd – Coming through New Street Station at night, rush hour on a foul blustery evening when all the trains are messed up.
I’d rather be anywhere else than here.
Nothing sums up the deadzone, the suck, this awful time of year: no end to the advancing darkness, travel worsening daily, weather closing in.
And yet, there’s something awfully optimistic about it. You know that in a few short weeks, it’ll be over, and we’ll be opening out again.
Patience. Patience.
November 21st – On the streets of Birmingham, the autumn leaves are making for a golden carpet, and as usual, however hard an army of street cleaners try, they fight a losing battle and all one can do is plough through the fallen remains of a summer past and enjoy the sounds, colour and sensation.
There is a downside, however: on urban pavers and country lanes, the leaves will mulch under foot and vehicle wheels, combine with rainwater, road oil and grease, and form a soapy, slippery wheel-stealing goop that will make riding a concentration suck for a few weeks to come.
Every season has it’s hazards.
November 15th – Late in the day, I popped into Birmingham to meet a prospective new cwork colleague, and came back as I often used to frequently, through a somnambulant, night-time Birmingham New Street Station.
The renovations here seem to have finished – although they don’t look it and the Stephenson street footbridge looks like the work stopped abruptly halfway through. But then, there’s only so much polishing and sprinkling with cheap glitter that can mask this huge architectural turd.
The place was charming though in it’s own night-time way, and once again, that late-night feelings vibe started to hit me.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see this post here.
Why does that haunt me so?
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